Secret Lucidity(25)
“I’m sorry if I can’t cater to everyone’s emotions when I’m simply trying to take care of my own.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” he says.
“This is why we broke up, Kroy. This right here. I told you I couldn’t be what you need. Yet, here you are, complaining that I’m not giving you what you need.”
He drops his hands from me and combs them through his hair as he takes a step back.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” I add. “But—”
“I don’t know how not to be with you,” he confesses on a cracked voice.
“And I don’t know how to be with you . . . at least not right now. I can’t take care of you when I’m struggling to take care of myself. There’s no way I can meet your expectations of me, and to be honest, I don’t want to even try. I know that might sound selfish—”
“No,” he interrupts, shaking his head. “I’m the selfish one. You made it clear to me at the bonfire, and here I am, acting as if you’re still my girl.”
It feels like we’re breaking up all over again.
I hold on to my words, knowing whatever I say will only twist the knife in deeper, and I don’t want to hurt him more than I already have. So, I watch in silence as he walks out of my house and to his car that’s parked along the curb.
He glances over to me, and in a softness he might not be able to hear, I tell him, “I love you,” before he gets into his car and drives away.
I WOKE UP THIS MORNING and decided to stay home yet again, but only after promising myself I would return after this weekend. My mother went out again last night. She left without even telling me this time. I heard her clamoring up the stairs way past midnight, and she hasn’t come out of her room since.
I hate that she drives drunk, that she doesn’t even care what happens to her, or me for that matter. How have I become so worthless to her that she’s willing to risk her life and possibly leave me an orphan at seventeen? I’m still mulling over those thoughts as I put away the laundry I did earlier today, but then the doorbell rings. When I find Coach Andrews standing on my front porch, my lips part in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
He holds up a file. “I never gave you the waivers, and if you plan on being eligible to swim this year, your mother needs to sign off on them.”
I glance over my shoulder to the top of the stairs quickly before turning back to him. “Umm . . . she’s taking a nap right now. You can leave the papers with me, and I’ll return them on Monday.”
“Are you going to show up on Monday?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” I tell him, holding out my hand for the file.
He doesn’t pass it over, instead, he gives me a doubting look, but before I can assure him that I will be at school, my mother appears, asking, “Who’s this?”
I turn to see her walking down the stairs, tightening her silk robe and running her hands over her hair, as if the slight effort would make her look any less like the drunk she has become. My face swelters in humiliation. The once polished woman is now withered with sunken in cheeks, last night’s makeup smeared across her face, and a diabolical case of bedhead.
“Mrs. Hale,” he greets as if he’s blind to the visual in front of us. “I’m David Andrews, Cam’s English teacher and swim coach.”
“Please, call me Diane.”
“You should go,” I blurt in a rush, and his eyes flick away from me and over to my mother when she bumps drunkenly into my shoulder, reeking of vodka.
“Don’t be so rude, Camellia.”
I see the appalled expression Coach Andrews thinks he’s concealing. It’s the same expression I’m wearing too. Because this cannot be happening. He cannot be seeing this.
“Come on in, David.”
The two of them walk across the foyer and into the living room, and I know he can smell the booze on her. She wears it so sloppily as she pretends to be sober in her bathrobe at four o’clock in the afternoon.
Should I run away now or wait until after he leaves?
“So, what brings you by?” she asks as the two of them take a seat on the couch, while I keep my distance, standing against the wall on the opposite side of the open-spaced room.
He hands her the papers, and as she signs, he goes over the away meets for the year. He’s wasting his breath though. She won’t remember anything he’s telling her, because she runs on alcohol’s burnt fumes.
“So, how’s my daughter doing in school this year?”
“School just started, Mom,” I mutter, annoyed that she’s so damn clueless right now.
She sounds like an idiot.
My words bypass her, and when she turns back to Coach, she asks, “Well, how is her swimming going?”
He looks over to me, and I drop my head, wishing this wall would swallow me and spit me out into another town, another planet, or any place that’s far away from here.
“She’s doing well,” he tells her, covering for me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. “She’s easing in and working at building her strength back up in her shoulder.”
“That’s so good to hear.” Her smile is obnoxious.
“Is that all you needed, Coach?” I ask, anxious for him to get the hell out of here.